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Is Iran The Biggest State Sponsor of Terror?

I’m excited to announce that with today’s video and last week’s video, I now have enough vids put together a full Iran playlist! It’s weird how this stuff develops. I never set out to make almost 30 videos that deal with Iran in some capacity, but I suppose it’s kind of inevitable when covering the delusions of US foreign policy.

It’s all in here, the foolishness of Trump’s abandonment of the Iran deal, the US press’s inability to cover Iran anywhere near fairly, and so much more. With today’s video, and last week’s vid, I think I’ve got a good core of five vids that cover the most important bases of US policy towards the country. I’d like to really dive in on Iran at some point, the country’s history is absolutely fascinating, but I’m pleased to add another “series” on this channel, even if it was somewhat more haphazardly constructed than the other ones…

Hey there, despite what you may have heard, Iran is not the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. For six years I lived in Istanbul Turkey. For well over a decade Turkey has been ruled by a guy who has earned a terrible reputation abroad. One of the most frustrating things about Erdogan is the way that he defines terror.

When Erdogan says terrorist he can be talking about anybody from suicide bombers to armed resistance groups, to peaceful political opponents, to journalists who criticize him. Basically anybody who opposes Erdogan is accused of terrorism. Turkey is an extreme case, but we can see this sort of thing all over the world. In recent years China has built up a real world 1984 in Xinjiang province. The Muslim majority has been subjected to a state of the art system of surveillance and reeducation camps, essentially prisons, that hold as many as a million people. The justification for all of this is terrorism.

The definition of the word terrorism is a political tool all over the world, making the word essentially meaningless. What’s important to remember is that the United States does the exact same thing when it calls Iran the largest state sponsor of terror. Just like Erdogan, The United States expands the definition to mean anything we don’t like.

Iran destabilizes this entire region. It supports proxy militias and terrorist groups. It arms… it is an arms dealer to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Iran conducts cyber hacking campaigns. And it supports the murderous Assad regime as well. Unlike the prior administration we will not neglect the vast scope of Iran’s terrorism.

Vast scope indeed. So according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo there everything Iran does, from supporting an embattled ally in Syria to trying to hack computers is terrorism. So does that make the US’s National Security Agency a terrorist organization? If you scratch the surface at all, it becomes clear that the US definition of terror is all about who is taking the action rather than what is being done. This is exactly what Erdogan and Xi Jinping do and that’s not a good look for the United states. Now don’t get me wrong, just like the United States, Iran definitely does do some stuff that qualifies under the strictest definitions of terrorism.

Your definition of terrorism is probably different from mine. While like 99% of the world sees the kinds of attacks on innocents that Saudi Arabia inspired Jihadists like ISIS carries out as terrorism, when it gets to the stuff Iran funds opinions are much more varied. Most people in the US and Israel see Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. That view may officially be shared by many other governments,but in my experience that’s not the way that most of the world’s people’s see these organizations. For me I like to differentiate between actions.

For example I don’t want my country the United States to be judged solely by the fact that we are allied with Al Queda in Yemen and Syria. There is more to the US than just supporting terrorism. Same thing for Hezbollah.

I am happy to call Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists when they shoot missiles at Israeli cities. But are they terrorists when they provide social services? Or are they terrorists when they are fighting ISIS and other suicide bombing jihadists in Syria and Iraq? That’s most of what Iran has been funding for the past 5 years by the way.

So according to the US government, even when Iran is funding organizations that are killing what most of the world understands to be terrorists. They are terrorists. Basically none of this makes any sense. Calling Iran the largest state sponsor of terror is just political nonsense. Serious people should stop doing it. And as viewers of this channel know well, all the most vicious and universally condemned terrorism has its roots in Saudi Arabia.

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